Game changer: How Sam Wasser became the ivory detective
| Seattle
When Sam Wasser was a young biologist studying baboons in Tanzania, he never imagined he would one day lead an international force cracking down on the smuggling of illegal goods, from elephant ivory to pangolins and timber.
Yet fighting transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs in law enforcement parlance, is exactly what he鈥檚 doing today, all because of his passion for animals.
And because he discovered how to extract DNA from elephant poop.
Why We Wrote This
Sometimes compassion takes people in unexpected directions. This biologist turned a love for animals into an international quest for justice.
Today, Dr. Wasser is a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. But in 1989 he was observing environmental stresses on baboons when Tanzania launched Operation Uhai (鈥渇reedom鈥� in Swahili). That mission involved six months of intelligence-gathering and then a 鈥渂rutal crackdown鈥� on elephant poaching rings. Tanzania battles a reputation for being among a handful of worst offenders in Asia and Africa that fuel the illegal ivory trade.聽 聽
In the 1800s, Dr. Wasser explains, an estimated 5 million elephants roamed Africa. From 1979 until 1989 governments around the world instituted ivory bans, but much of the damage had been done and the population had dropped to just 600,000.
Operation Uhai 鈥渓iterally stopped poaching in the country, where it was the worst in Africa,鈥� he adds. But that victory also had unexpected consequences.
鈥淎ll of a sudden our baboons started to be killed by leopards at an incredibly high rate,鈥� Dr. Wasser says.
He and his colleagues had been studying three troops of baboons. 鈥淲ithin six months the troop of 20 were all killed, and by about a year and a half later the two troops of 70 were down to about 12 animals each,鈥� he says.
The team realized the leopards had mostly ignored the local baboon fare while feasting on the remains of elephants left by poachers, who took only the tusks.聽聽
The decline in elephant carrion and subsequent decimation of the baboon troops 鈥渕ade me realize how significant poaching really was on all levels,鈥� he says, 鈥渁nd on all the other species that were similarly affected by the ecological cascade of events.鈥�
Elephant families, broken by poaching
A self-described 鈥渁nimal nerd,鈥� Dr. Wasser points out that elephants are 鈥渟ome of the smartest animals around,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hey can recognize themselves in a mirror. You can put a spot on their forehead, and they鈥檒l look in a mirror and they鈥檒l wipe it off. That鈥檚 a high cognitive ability.鈥� But 鈥渨e lost over 100,000 elephants from 2007 to 2015. There are currently an estimated 415,000 elephants remaining in Africa.鈥�
Dr. Wasser explains that poachers often go back and kill members of the same elephant families 鈥� so frequently that he believes it creates a form of elephant PTSD.
Elephants also exhibit a strong interest in their dead. 鈥淭hey鈥檒l go and they鈥檒l just explore the carcasses of elephants. They know it鈥檚 dead. They know who it is that died,鈥� he says, 鈥渁nd they have tremendous social bonds. Their family members keep getting killed, over and over.
鈥淚t鈥檚 just too hard to watch, and the fact that we鈥檙e developing ways to potentially stop it 鈥� it keeps me going.鈥�
For the baboon studies, Dr. Wasser used hormones from animal dung to help understand their reproductive successes or failures. That work led Dr. Wasser to think, 鈥淵ou know, I could apply these tools to elephants. I realized that feces are really easy to collect, especially from an elephant that has a massive poop. You could then go and collect dung samples from elephants across the continent, genotype all the samples, and essentially create a DNA map,鈥� he explains. 鈥淎nd we could then get the DNA from the ivory to match to the map.鈥�
It sounds straightforward today. Yet no one then had yet figured out how to collect DNA from elephant dung or tusks. Nevertheless, by 1997 Dr. Wasser had cracked the code and published one of the first papers on extracting DNA from elephant feces, and 鈥渞ight around the same time we were moving forward to see if we could develop methods to get DNA out of ivory.鈥�
Dr. Wasser鈥檚 team got its first break in 2005: Bill Clark, chair of Interpol鈥檚 Wildlife Crime Working Group, asked for help analyzing a shipment of ivory intercepted three years earlier in Singapore. It had been the largest seizure of ivory to date, about 6 tons, which included 40,000 carved hankos 鈥� also called chops 鈥� small pieces of ivory used throughout Asia to ink one鈥檚 name or seal on correspondence. Each would fetch about $200 retail, making the hankos alone worth $8 million.
Until Dr. Wasser and his colleagues employed their emerging science to analyze that seizure, the biologist says 鈥渆veryone鈥� believed these tusks were coming from all across Africa. But, using their dung-to-DNA analyses, 鈥渢hat鈥檚 not what we found.鈥�
Dr. Wasser鈥檚 game-changing work helped law enforcement realize the ivory was coming from a small number of specific areas in east and west-central Africa 鈥� yet was being shipped out of ports on either side of the continent.
To illustrate, he rises quickly from his desk and points at a map of Africa on his office wall. Different colored dots mark where tusks came from and out of which port each was shipped. His finger moves from dot to dot: 鈥淚f it鈥檚 orange, it means that it was containerized in Kenya. If it鈥檚 maroon it means it was containerized in Uganda.鈥�
His finger keeps moving, pointing to the dates of different seizures and blue dots pinpointing the ivory鈥檚 origin.
Identifying poaching hot spots
鈥淧eople don鈥檛 understand the intricate structure in wildlife crime,鈥� explains Rod Khattabi, a former homeland security agent who now runs the Justice Initiative for the Grace Farms Foundation, which partners with Dr. Wasser to train law enforcement agencies in Africa. (Mr. Khattabi and Dr. Wasser are set to travel to Africa later in May to train authorities fighting poachers 鈥� Mr. Khattabi in ways to go undercover and Dr. Wasser showing them how DNA fits into investigations as well as prosecutions.) Wildlife criminals operate like independent cells, which makes arresting disparate elements of the syndicate tougher.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 why Sam is so critical 鈥� because he can connect the dots,鈥� Mr. Khattabi says. 鈥淗e鈥檒l tell me, 鈥楻od, this stuff is coming from Rwanda鈥� even if it shipped out of Togo. He can almost pinpoint where the elephant got killed.鈥�
Serendipitously Dr. Clark, the now-retired Interpol agent who worked with Dr. Wasser across Africa, had trained as a biologist. In 2005, he 鈥渨ent to Sam because I understood that the techniques he was pioneering offered important tools in helping investigate elephant poaching and ivory trafficking in Africa,鈥� he says. 鈥淪am鈥檚 work identified the poaching hot spots.鈥�
Dr. Wasser鈥檚 sleuthing has expanded beyond elephants. 鈥淭he work that we were doing with the illegal ivory trade 鈥� we realized it was relevant to all of these other species that are all coming out of Africa,鈥� he says. 鈥淪ame problem: transnational criminals shipping it on containers 鈥� and us needing to really get the transnational criminals.鈥�
In 2021, with funding from the Washington State Legislature, Dr. Wasser and his colleagues formed the Center for Environmental Forensic Science. 鈥淭here were also other tools that other scientists were using that could complement what we鈥檙e doing,鈥� he says. 鈥淣ow we鈥檝e got over 40 scientists from the University of Washington alone that are part of our center鈥� using an array of synergistic methods including isotopes, chemistry, and handheld DNA detectors to fight a spectrum of crimes.
Counting that initial seizure, Dr. Wasser鈥檚 team has analyzed roughly 70 seizures, 鈥渁bout 111 tons of ivory,鈥� which Dr. Clark says 鈥減rovided a lot of prima facie evidence prosecutors use.鈥�
Almost a billion seagoing containers travel the globe annually, Dr. Wasser says, yet only 1% or 2% get inspected, and corruption in ports and governments further reduces enforcement.
Criminals with systems for smuggling ivory are perfectly positioned to traffic other contraband. Smugglers sometimes hide ivory, narcotics, and pangolins, thought to be the world鈥檚 most-poached animal, in shipments of illegally harvested timber.
鈥淚t鈥檚 all connected,鈥� Dr. Wasser says of the TCOs, insisting that collaboration among those fighting these criminals is vital: 鈥淟ook, either you collaborate or wave goodbye鈥� to species after species.
Part of why Dr. Wasser developed the Center for Environmental Forensic Science was to coordinate efforts among local as well as national governments, universities, and nongovernmental organizations, marshaling their complementary skills to battle well-organized transnational criminals.
鈥淚鈥檝e long had the opinion that Sam deserves a Nobel Prize, but the Nobel Committee doesn鈥檛 give it to his type of work,鈥� says Dr. Clark. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a big void in recognizing people who contribute to the future of planet Earth.鈥�
Dr. Wasser, though, seems more concerned with elephants than awards. 鈥淲hat drives me now is seeing the damage that these criminals are causing to nature,鈥� he says, 鈥渁nd the fact that they鈥檙e getting away with this 鈥� and wanting to really fix it.鈥�
